We are incredibly honored to have esteemed poet and translator Andrew Schelling teach a workshop this fall on Ezra Pound’s multi-decade, multi-language, multi-faceted poem The Cantos. Registration is OPEN for this wonderful opportunity explore this difficult yet legendary book.

From Hailey, Idaho, but later Europe where he would remain throughout his life, Ezra Pound was associated with multiple iconic writers of the time, such as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, William Butler Yeats and William Carlos Williams. Pound began writing The Cantos in 1915, and in July of 1917 Canto III was published in Poetry magazine by editor Harriet Monroe.

In 1925, the multiple Cantos were compiled into A Draft of XVI Cantos. The Pisan Cantos were written while Pound was incarcerated in an American detention center in Italy and won the prestigious Bolligen Prize for Poetry in 1949. The Cantos became Pound’s major poetic work throughout his life, and the last sections were published in 1968 before his death in 1972. The current collection includes 120 sections. While much of Pound’s work has been met with unfavorable public opinions due to his rejection of poetic formalities and anti-semitism, many poets have turned to Pound’s work as a resistance to the stringent rules of New Criticism teachings.

Focusing on multiple themes with a nonlinear structure, The Cantos can be difficult to comprehend, with Pound himself stating “I cannot make it cohere.” Through reading and analysis regarding not only The Cantos, but the literary culture of the “Pound era,” ancestral teachings, and politics, economics, art, and human history, Andrew Schelling’s fall workshop offers insight and context to the book.

More information and registration for the workshop are available HERE. More information on Andrew Schelling is available HERE. The first class of this workshop will take place on November 19, so be sure to register ASAP! You won’t want to miss this insightful and in depth opportunity to learn about one of poetry’s many influential works.

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Cantos
https://poets.org/book/cantos
https://bollingen.yale.edu/poet/ezra-pound